A Nonlinear Q-Switching Impedance Technique for Picosecond Pulse Radiation in Silicon

作者：Chen Peiyu^*; Assefzadeh M Mahdi; Babakhani Aydin

来源：IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2016, 64(12): 4685-4700.

DOI：10.1109/TMTT.2016.2623700

• Impulse radiator
• nonlinear circuits
• optical sampling
• picosecond pulse
• pulse amplitude modulation
• quality factor
• SiGe BiCMOS

This paper presents a nonlinear Q-switching impedance (NLQSI) technique for picosecond pulse radiation in silicon. A prototype chip is designed with four NLQSI-based impulse generation channels, which can produce picosecond pulses with a reconfigurable amplitude. An on-chip impulse-coupling scheme combines the outputs from four channels and delivers the combined signal to an on-chip antenna. In addition, an asynchronous optical-sampling measurement system is used to characterize the radiated picosecond pulses in the time domain. The prototype chip can radiate 4-ps pulses with an SNR > 1 bandwidth of 161 GHz. Furthermore, pulse amplitude modulation is experimentally demonstrated. The prototype chip is fabricated in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process technology with a die area of 1 mm(2).

• 出版日期2016-12